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At Glastonbury, near the base of the two hills known as Chalice Hill and Glastonbury Tor, there is a sacred well, described variously in the Grail stories. This is the Chalice Well, into which the Chalice was, according to one story, dropped for safekeeping for a time. This reminds us of the modern discovery of the church lying under the cistern which is thought to be Christ's tomb, near Mount Golgotha. This ancient sanctuary and tomb had been hidden under the waters of the cistern for many centuries, until a leakage caused the water to drain away, and the ancient site was revealed. The tomb had evidently been the nucleus of a church where the Christians worshipped in secret.
We find also that when the Copper Scroll discovered in the Dead Sea Caves was finally deciphered, this proved to be a map and listing of hiding places of treasure, which had belonged perhaps to the Temple, or perhaps to the Essenes to be used when the Messiah returned; a number of these hiding places were cisterns. Legend has long had it that treasure belonging to the House of David had been hidden away, pending the Messiah's return; and it may well be that some of this treasure belonged not merely to the Temple bank, nor yet to the Messianic movement of Jesus' time, but was actually the property of the Kings of Judah in exile.
The Chalice Well is an ancient sacred fountain, pre-Christian in origin; and it is said that its waters are radioactive. So also the area in Bohemia associated in some legends with the Brothers of the Rose Cross is characterized by radioactive mountains. Mythologists are agreed that it is the Sacred Well which gave rise to the story of the Holy Grail or Druidic "Cauldron" with its bubbling waters.
In the twentieth century we have seen excitement in religious circles by the discovery of certain cups which it is thought might have been the true Cup of the Last Supper and hence the Grail of legend. One, a cup of Syrian blue grass, with Greek inscriptions upon it, was discovered in the museum at Toledo, Spain. The inscriptions read: "Be of good cheer," and "What are you here for?" (In the New Testament, Christ's words to Judas, "Friend, wherefore art thou come?") There are five such cups in existence which supports the tradition that six cups were used at the Last Supper. Two are in the Berlin Museum, one at Leyden, one in the British Museum, and one in Italy. The Toledo Cup is thought to be a copy of the so-called Antioch Cup, which is at present in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and has been on display in the Cloisters there at various times. This chalice is a plain silver cup of common design which was found in the ruins of Antioch in 1910 and sent to the United States at the outbreak of the First World War. After nine years of research, Dr. Gustavus Eisen, an eminent scholar, produced a book, published in two large volumes under the title The Great Chalice of Antioch, in which he adduced evidence which he thought showed that this cup might well be the actual cup of the Last Supper. The cup itself is plain, but it is set in an elaborately worked silver dressing on which are inscribed representations of Christ and the Apostles who sat with Him at the Last Supper. The likenesses correspond with the traditional word descriptions found in ancient documents of the primitive Church.
It is said that this cup was kept at Glastonbury until the time of the Crusades, when it was entrusted to the Crusaders, and was lost in battle at Antioch and discovered there in 1910 by Arab excavators.
In some apocryphal accounts we read of a golden cup as being "the Cup of Prophecy," symbolizing the Secret Doctrine of Moses, handed down to the Seventy Elders of Israel on Mount Sinai. Again, the Serpent and Eagle are associated with the Gospel of John, and we are reminded of glyphs and pictures in which a Cup holds a serpent with upraised head, which, in one instance, St. John blesses.
The antiquity of this symbol is suggested in the Persian account of "the Cup of Jemshyd," the celestial "seven-ringed Cup" from which the legendary King quaffed wisdom.
Ageless wisdom, the first religion given to the early patriarchs by the angelic messengers of the gods, was transmitted whole from the spiritual world to early leaders of mankind. These Wise Ones, masters of other days, were men above creed and class. They served not idols but ideals. Theologies and philosophies grew up around them, yet each divine leader was greater than the Order which he founded. Melchizedek of biblical fame was one of these, King Arthur was another. From the same place they all came forth.
In man's first ages certain divinely instituted Mysteries were the intermediaries between man and the gods. These august institutions were the custodians of a superior learning by which the mind was inclined to a way of larger truth and deeper understanding. As mankind turned increasingly toward materialism, these sacred schools became corrupt. This is admirably portrayed in the coming and the passing of King Arthur.
The Holy Grail is a subject of perpetual and absorbing interest to the scholar, the artist and the occultist-through each of these approaches the study from a somewhat different point of view. Popular Christianity has, it is true, lost the enthusiasm for the Grail stories which was so conspicuous a feature of the nineteenth century in England and on the continent of Europe, perhaps because contemporary science has produced miracles which seem to overshadow the miracles of religion; but when the beautiful old tales are interpreted in the light of soul-illumination and Initiation into great Mysteries, the interest springs up anew as vital as it ever was. Perhaps these old legends were in need of a "rest," in need of a time of quiet in which to send their roots deeper into the mystic past of Christendom, whence also they first arose.
Although the legendary history of the Grail is intimately connected with the life of the earliest Christian community, its appeal is not limited to believing Christians. The Grail Mysteries have always been, and will always remain, for all of mankind and for all ages in time, for they deal with spiritual realities basic to the human spirit which are everywhere intuitively comprehended and spontaneously loved.
The Holy Grail, according to the legend, was the Cup from which the Lord Christ and His disciples drank at the Last Supper, that holy night in which He gave to them the last and highest teaching of His earthly ministry. One of the sources of this legend is a charming account in verse known as The Sweet Old Poem of Joseph of Arimathea.
The legend has it that Joseph of Arimathea was present when Christ Jesus sat for that last hour with His disciples and gave them His farewell blessing. As his memory lingered over the wise words of the Master, Joseph felt that he must have a memorial of that hour so rich in meaning to the world, so he returned to the holy Upper Chamber, there to find the table still standing with the remains of the feast upon it. He joyfully took the Cup from which all had drunk and hid it in the folds of his mantle.
As he stood later in the darkness of Calvary, Joseph still held the Cup in his arms; and when the Roman soldier pierced the Master's side with his lance, Joseph lifted the Cup and caught in it the sacred blood which flowed from the wound. After the Cup had served so holy a purpose it could never fall to any ordinary use. Joseph preserved the Cup with its sacred contents, and it became his guardian and comforter, the Holy Grail.
Joseph later lost his possessions and was thrown into prison where he was left to starve in a high tower, but the Cup was with him, which saved him from all harm. For something like forty years he lingered behind stone walls, but declared afterward that it had seemed to him three days and three nights because the Grail was with him.
He had been condemned to starvation, but the angels spread for him the table of the Grail, and he was fed daily with what he liked best to eat and to drink. His confinement was to be solitary, but glorious winged visitors floated through the stone walls of his prison, bringing him words of heavenly consolation; and the Master whom he had seen hanging upon the cross sat with him for long hours and taught him wisdom he could have learned from no other source. What wonder that the forty years seemed but as three days and three nights!
When the glad hour of freedom came, the Master said: "Son, go thou forth and carry My message to many lands." Then Joseph was sorrowful and replied, "Master, I have always been slow of speech, and I cannot preach," "Son," said the Shining One, with gentle encouragement, "trouble not as to thy words, but open thy lips and speech shall be given thee."
So Joseph left his prison walls and went to the shore of the sea where a white boat carried him to Britain. Then joy came to that land. The great Abbey of Glastonbury was built to hold the Grail. The hawthorn bloomed at Christmas time because the Grail had come, and the nightingale sang in its branches.
To the discerning mind the foregoing incidents are subtle references to certain initiatory experiences that came to St. Joseph of Arimathea. The nature of these experiences will be shown in the following pages.
The legends state that when Joseph left the Holy Land carrying the Grail he also took with him several other sacred objects: the Crown of Thorns, the Spear which pierced the Savior's side, the four Nails, the Dish on which the holy food was served. There were five "hallows" in all, and we shall discover in the High History of the Holy Grail that the sacred Cup was known to King Arthur in five different forms, the last of which was the Chalice.
Joseph travelled with an entourage consisting, among others, of Mary Magdalene, Lazarus, Longinus (or Longius, the soldier who thrust the spear into Christ's side), Mary and Martha, and a certain King Evelake whom he converted to Christ in the land of Sarras, "the East." This King Evelake prayed to be allowed to live until one of his lineage might come to serve the Holy Grail; and so in the Grail cycle we find that he still lives three hundred years later, and in the Parsifal cycle of Wagner we know him under the name of Titurel. Upon his white shield the figure of the Crucified had been drawn, but this disappeared and the shield remained blank until the death of the son of Joseph of Arimathea, who, dying, wrote upon it with his blood the sign of a red cross. This shield also was stored away in the "White Abbey" until that one should come who was destined to redeem it. The knight to whom it descended was Galahad, a name meaning "Gilead," as shown in certain Vatican texts where the name Gilead is in fact translated as Galahad.
Thus we may assume from Grail legends that the cross was already known in Britain at the time Constantine saw his vision, became Emperor of Rome and founded his Order of Red Cross Knights. From an early time the red cross was the sign of the martyr and during the Crusades became especially associated with the Order of Templars — and after the destruction of the Order of Templars, with the Order of the Garter and with St. George, the great martyr soldier.
Farther back still we may trace the ancient emblem of the red cross in Masonic legend, where it is shown as under a veil, in fashion of a pantomime, how the staggering steps of the dying Master, Hiram Abiff, describe in blood a cross. (Who Was Hiram Abiff? J.S.M. Ward, M.A., Baskerville Press, London, 1925.) According to Christian esotericists this Master Workman was reborn as Lazarus and raised from the tomb by "the strong grip of the paw of the Lion of Judah."
The archetypal emblem, without embellishments, is the simple equal-armed cross inscribed within a circle, signifying the four quarters of the earth, which the Templars hoped to rule from a central throne at Jerusalem. And throughout Europe, so long as the Kingdom of Jerusalem stood and the Knights Templar were its protectors, so long the belief persisted that these Knights were veritably the Knights of the Holy Grail. After the Kingdom of Jerusalem fell to the Moselms and the Order of the Temple was suppressed (1312), the red cross was taken over by Edward III of England in connection with the Order of the Garter (1344) under the aegis of St. George, together with the insignia of the red rose. It is of the utmost significance that these "garters" were in fact an ornamental device consisting of a wreath of seven roses on a blue ribbon from which depended an image of St. George.
Another stream of development emerged in Germany, where in 1313, in the year following the downfall of the Templars, the Order of the Rose Cross was founded by Christian Rosenkreuz; the black cross of the Germanic Order of Templars, the Teutonic Knights, entwined by a living rose plant becoming his personal emblem. (The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, Max Heindel, Oceanside, Calif.)
It is said that Joseph's little company did not proceed at once and directly to Britain, however, but stopped first at Marseille, where Joseph was again instructed in a vision to journey still farther west, to Britain. And so it was that he and his company arrived at Glastonbury, where his first act was to build a "little church," in later times known as the Chapel of St. Joseph; and this church was a shrine for the holy Cup, where it was always surrounded and safe-guarded by these holy ones.
Let no one be misled by the words "little church." This "little church" was to house the Christ Mysteries in the Western world, and it endured to challenge the authority of Rome in later centuries despite bitter and cruel persecutions which drove its faithful servants into hiding; and it continually knew and called to itself its own in every century.
This early Greek-speaking British Christianity was on the friendliest footing with the native Druidism, through the mediation of the free Greek spirit which had already found haven in what was the "far west" of that day. It has been said that the Druids, lacking a written language, first began to write down their doctrines in the Greek characters; and it is understandable that the Druids should have taken up the Greek language which was then the universal mode of communication. There were Greek universities in Gaul, and Marseille itself was a university town, strongly pervaded by the Greek spirit; and the legend is well known that a Pythagorean teacher once taught Orphism to the Druids.
After Joseph of Arimathea had carried the Sacred Cup of the Last Supper, the Sacred Spear and other "hallows" to Britain, his descendants from generation to generation constituted themselves the devoted guardians of the sacred relics, under a vow of harmlessness and absolute purity of thought, word, emotion and deed. For many years the Holy Grail remained in full view of the pilgrims who came to the shrine, and its presence conferred blessings upon the land whose king had given it sanctuary. But at length one of the holy men to whom its guardianship had descended so far forgot the obligation of his sacred office as to look with unhallowed eyes upon a young female pilgrim as she knelt before him. The sacred lance instantly punished his frailty, as it suddenly fell upon him, inflicting a deep wound. This extraordinary wound could by no means be healed, and the guardian of the Holy Grail was ever afterward called "Le Roi Pescheur" — the Sinner King. The Holy Grail withdrew its visible presence from the crowds who came to worship, and an iron age succeeded to the happiness which its presence had diffused among the tribes of Britain.
The ancient home of the Grail was called Avalon, or the Isle of Avalon, because in the early centuries of the Christian era this land was marshy and held a lake. In later times the lake disappeared, and the "Isle of Marsh" became a valley, the Vale of Avalon. Here Joseph and his followers built their "little church," and around it they built twelve small huts in which they lived, praying and meditating, and doing good works for all who came their way.
Joseph of Arimathea, the legends say, left this earth life about the year 85 A.D.
It is from these early times that the White Swan became the symbol of the Grail Knight, initiated. in the Mysteries of the Christ. The Swan, and another aquatic bird, the Pelican, were the emblems of the Christ Truth. The Swan in particular has been from remotest times in the Orient a symbol of Deity and of the Initiate, devotee or yoga, who has achieved liberation in God. In Wagner's music-dramas the Swan motif always announces the coming of a Knight of the Grail. Again we note that the constellation Cygnus, the Swan, is called the Northern Cross and stands upright on the western horizon in the likeness of a Latin cross at its setting.
Whether the Antioch Cup or the Toledo Cup is in fact the cup which garnered the blood of Christ on Golgotha, the esoterics of the history remain unchanged. A Mystery School was founded in Britain by one who is thought to have been Joseph of Arimathea, and this School (or Church) owed no allegiance to Rome.
The weaving of the Arthurian tales into the Grail cycle in the Middle Ages under the patronage of Henry II (father of Richard the Lion-hearted and husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine whose emblem was the Golden Rose) was in truth a return of the English spirit to its spiritual roots in the Christianity of Joseph of Arimathea and the "little church" of Glastonbury. When Henry VII tried to show that his son Arthur was King Arthur returned, he prepared the way for Henry VIII and the English Reformation. English kings under the domination of Rome had tried, and would try again, to stamp out this British Christianity, but repeatedly it arose from the dust into which it was trampled, for its seed was imperishable.
When at last Henry VIII freed the British nation from the dominion of the Bishop of Rome, the enemies of esoteric Christianity imputed shame to a church founded, as they declared, by a king whose only motive was to rid himself of one wife and to take another. What, they demanded, can be expected of a church whose foundations are laid in adultery and murder? — a slander oft repeated in our own day. But the historian of esoteric Christianity reveals the truth: that the foundation of the true and original Church of England was laid by Joseph of Arimathea, who, even as Peter, was instructed by the Christ both before and after His Crucifixion, and that the authority of Joseph is not to be set aside by Peter. Nor was it set aside by Peter when Peter himself sat in the Bishop's Chair at Rome.
Whatever may be the facts about Henry VIII as a human being and as a king, he acted in this instance as the representative of the great suppressed Church of his people, and it was by their will, not his own, that the separation from Rome came about.
Great confusion has arisen from the suppression of the history of Greek and Druidic Christianity in Britain and Gaul, as well as the Christianity implanted among the Germanic peoples by Christian missionaries who were not under allegiance to Rome; and it is only as we unravel the intricate symbolism of the Grail legends that something of the truth is once more brought to light, in these last centuries of the Piscean Age in which "all that is hidden shall be revealed," when "Elias" comes to restore all things.
Whether Peter or Joseph was the earlier in Europe the scriptural and apocryphal documents do not clearly show. The Grail legends, as we have seen, try to reconcile two differing accounts of Joseph's arrival in Britain; the one, that he was in prison for three days and nights, the other that he was in prison for forty years. In the latter case, if he was imprisoned immediately after the Crucifixion of the Christ, his release would have come at about the time when Jerusalem fell to the Romans. We note also that when it is said that Joseph lost his possessions this would pertain to his possessions in Judea. But Joseph was a wealthy merchant whose fleet of ships sailed to the far off places of the world, Britain among them. There both means and land awaited him and his companions; or at least as much as was needed for the day and the way.
Grail scholars are not in agreement as to the nature and location of Carbonek, the Castle of the Grail, "the Castle Foursquare." The stronghold of the Grail and the identity of its kings was as profound a mystery to the Middle Ages as to the modern. The Grail, and other hallows, was broughLfrom Jerusalem to Britain, and the Castle built for their protection. It cannot be proved, however, that the Castle of the Grail Kings was located at Glastonbury. One tradition has it in the mountains dividing Spain and France and in the care of a "pagan" king who was converted to Christianity. The kings and princes of this dynasty bear fantastic names Arabian in sound. The story is that Sennabor, Prince of Cappadocia, and his three sons, Parille, Azubar and Sabbilar, were with the Emperor Vespasian at the time of the scige of Jerusalem by the Roman legions. Parille married the daughter of Vespasian — Argusilla or Orgusille — at Rome and received lands in France, while to Azubar and Sabbilar went Anjou and Cornwall. The son of Parille and Argusilla was named Titurisone, "the stem of the Grail-race," who became king after the death of his father (who was poisoned) and married Elizabeth of Arragonia (Aragon). Titurisone's son was Titurel, the first of the Grail dynasty proper. Titurel ruled over precisely those areas which later were important in the stories of the Swan Knights: Provence, Aries, Lotharingia, Auvergne and Navarre.
The site on which to build the Castle of the Holy Grail was revealed to Titurel by an angel, a remote spot high in the Pyrenees, safe from intrusion, guarded on every side by natural barriers of mountain and stream. Men labored on the sacred structure during the day; angels carried the labor forward in the hours of the night; and so the holy house was built. The castle was three or four hundred years in building and Titurel still lived; he founded a dynasty, marrying Richonde, a holy maiden who was the daughter of a Spanish king. The elder of their two sons, Frimutel by name, succeeded his father Titurel, and the eldest of Frimutel's five children was Amfortas. Among the daughters of the Grail dynasty was Herzeliede who became the mother of Parsifal, and Urepanse, the mother of Prester John.
After Parsifal became king, Titurel retired to India (a term anciently meaning the Far East generally and including Persia), where he died. Parsifal ruled for ten (or twelve) years, and after the murder of his son Lohengrin he too returned to Asia. Titurel seems to be the King Evelake of the English narratives.
The fact that this account ascribes the earliest origins of the Grail dynasty to Cappadocia, the home of St. George, explains the insistent inclusion of St. George in the Grail histories.
Yet the relationship of the Grail Castle and its dynasty to Glastonbury remains obscure. The dynasty appears to be closely associated with Glastonbury Abbey, which is almost certainly the White Abbey mentioned in the Grail cycles. It was at the "White Abbey" that Galahad's white shield hung, bearing the red cross inscribed upon it in blood by Joseph.
Joseph's little church and community were on a marshland; Carbonek is far otherwise. In Tennyson's Idylls of the King it is Lancelot who gives us the description:
In this passage Tennyson describes only the lions which guard the Grail, symbolic of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, but we find elsewhere that the peacock is frequently shown, together with the lion, as, for example, in the Abbey paintings in the Boston Public Library. In primitive Christianity the peacock was emblematic of the glorified human soul, but in pagan antiquity it was a symbol of royalty. In some sects the peacock is the symbol of Lucifer, who should be redeemed and restored to his throne by the Messiah, according to kabbalistic lore.
Lancelot describes the Castle of Carbonek most vividly, together with the Grail sanctuary which occupies its tallest eastern tower:
In the Abbey pictures one observes that the artist shows the architectural style of the early Christian type Romanesque, not Gothic. But the Grail epics surviving today come from the medieval period when the great Gothic cathedrals were being built throughout Europe and the Isles. We therefore find, for instance, in some Grail legends, that the Grail Castle is a typical Gothic structure, with pinnacles and spires, and that upon the spire which rises above the towered sanctuary there is a ruby surmounted by a crystal cross. This calls to mind that Paracelsus said that the element Azoth was a "stone or crystal" which possessed magnetic properties and which had the power to cure diseases.
There has been much speculation as to the actual location of the Grail Castle, especially in the Middle Ages. The hill called Glastonbury Tor is said to be one of the "hollow mountains" often mentioned in fairy tales, with channels leading to the center of the earth; and it is possible that this may be the original site of the Grail Castle, although Chalice Hill, from its name, would seem to have distinct associations in this direction as well. Or perhaps, like the city of Lyonesse which is prominent in the story of Sir Tristram (it was there he met his death), Carbonek now lies sunken under the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Or. contrariwise, the rocky site which once "chasm-like met the sea" may as suggested be the present Glastonbury with its two sacred hills, now remote from the waters. As one part of the land sinks, another part rises in the great geological epochs of our planet. The whereabouts of the Castle Carbonek, Grail stronghold and Castle of its kings remains to be discovered.
One of the earliest accounts of the origin of the Emerald Grail to be found in the English language describes a war in heaven in which Lucifer fought with the Archangel Michael, and we are told that as Lucifer was cast headlong from heaven the glorious emerald of his crown fell into the abyss. It was rescued by angels and from it was formed the Cup of the Last Supper in which the Savior pledged His blood to His disciples and in which it was caught by Joseph of Arimathea on Golgotha.
Perhaps reminiscent of this legend is the hexagonal green dish preserved for centuries in the Church of St. Laurence at Genoa. This large dish is shaped roughly like the calyx of a flower, and was thought to be the dish on which the pasqual lamb was served at the Last Supper. Supposedly carved from a single huge emerald it was proved to be simple green glass when it was accidentally broken in the time of Napoleon I. It was taken by the Crusaders at the seige of Caesarea, in 1101, and came originally from a mosque at Antioch.
Green is in the East the color of wisdom, but Lucifer's crown held other jewels besides this great emerald. The crown jewel in Lucifer's crown was called Morning Star. By the multitude this was taken to mean Venus. By the initiated it was understood to signify Mercury, which is also a Morning Star, but one which is almost invisible to the naked eye and must be sought for diligently in its bright place close to the sun.
When Lucifer and his angels, says an ancient kabbalistic text, were expelled from heaven the seats left vacant were reserved for human souls. It is also said that the great work of the Messiah is to restore Lucifer to his throne in all the glory which he had in the beginning, and that when this is done, all the sins of mankind will be blotted out as if they had never been. It was to accomplish the redemption of Lucifer and Satan (Death and Hades) that Christ spent three days in the tomb. From which it would seem that the Hebrew and early Christian occultists saw a very close connection between the fallen angels and mankind, in which both were to be saved by the Messiah.
The peacock and lion shown in the Abbey paintings in the Boston Public Library may also refer to the redemption of Lucifer, in the light of this very ancient tradition.
Addison writes in The Spectator (1714): "I was once engaged in discourse with a Rosicrucian about the Great Secret. He talked of the secret as of a spirit which lived within an emerald, and converted everything that was near it to the highest perfection that it was capable of. 'It gives a lustre,' says he, 'to the sun and water to the diamond. It irradiates every metal and enriches lead pain and care and melancholy from the person on whom it falls. In short, its presence naturally changes every place into a kind of heaven.' After he had gone on for some time in this unintelligible cant, I found that he jumbled natural and moral ideas together into the same discourse, and that his great secret was nothing else than content."
Contentment, or tranquillity of mind, may well be a fruitage of the true spiritual alchemy, but it would be a mistake to think that this is all that is intended. The reference is to the solving of the problem ("great secret") of good and evil, which resides in the mind, and is the secret of the mind, or the "maya" of the orientalist. Goethe's "Emerald Serpent" and the "Emerald Rain bow" about the throne of God in Revelation have a similar connotation.
The star Venus was anciently associated with Adonis, the Morning Star rising in a wine-red sea of light. Every Mystery School has a legend of the cleansing blood of a dying Savior who is usually a god or demi-god. The blood of the dying Adonis produced the scarlet anemone of Lebanon. The blood of Attis shone through the blue of the violet. The blood of John the Baptist dyed red the pale petals of the wild rose. The blood of Dionysus flowed in the purple-red juice of the grape. Among gems the ruby symbolizes the saving blood and is therefore called the Stone of Christianity. It symbolizes the concept of the Savior (Pharaoh) of whom it is said in the Pyramid Texts: "Thou didst not depart dead, but thou didst depart living."
With red as the color of life, green is the color of life in the earth, the calyx in which the blossom is inclosed and which becomes the vessel bearing the seeds of future embodiments. In Greece, long before Christ, the death and resurrection of nature was symbolized in the Eleusinian Mysteries, where the "ear of corn" (sheath of wheat) of the goddess Demeter was reverenced; and in Egypt an image of Osiris was shown from which green leaves sprouted. According to Egyptian myth also "the goddess of heaven, striding across the sky, strews far and wide the green, luminous pebbles of emerald, malachite and turquoise which becomes stars and planets." (Pyramid Text Commentary).
The Egyptians also believed that when the sun travelled through the underworld during the night hours it was green. Hence the green sun would symbolize the midnight sun of Egypt, and show at the same time that as the sun always arises in the morning so the spirit always rises from the death of the body and is reborn.
The Emerald Grail has enjoyed continuing popularity in modern esotericism, yet the Grail of the Parsifal of Wolfram von Eschenbach is a Stone, in color garnet and hyacinth (red-purple), and Wagner describes his Grail as a chalice of crimson and purple hue. So also Tennyson in his "Idylls" says, 'the Holy Grail, rose-red with beatings in it as if alive."
Wolfram wrote that the Stone was left behind upon the earth by angels (not necessarily "fallen") when they returned to paradise. Enoch says that certain angels "fell" because they overstayed their time on earth and were not able to rejoin their celestial comrades.
Again we read in the Zohar that the four primary colors are red, green, white (in which yellow is hidden) and sapphire. Red, green and white are everywhere associated together in the Grail talismans, as also in alchemy.
A discovery of recent years throws added light on these symbolisms. In 1955 the caretaker of the Garden of the Tomb at Jerusalem, the supposed Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea in which Christ was buried, was tidying up loose rubble piled against the foot of the cliff on the left side of the Tomb, when he found a metal box in which was a richly jewelled ornament. This was a cross set with twelve rubies against a background of sun with golden rays, with a crown above it holding five green stones, and with a white bird below it brooding over seven little birds as in a nest, and with a semi-circle of eleven white stones at the base. Two pieces of metal, like the legs of a compass, appear to meet somewhere behind the central ornament of cross and sunburst. The crown with green stones may quite possibly suggest Lucifer's crown.
Many persons supposed that because this artifact was found outside Joseph's tomb it must go back to the early Christian era; but the Tomb and Garden show evidence of having been entered at many different times, and some scientists date the ornament no more than one hundred fifty to two hundred years ago. However, the scientists are not in complete agreement, and the jewel may be much older. If it is no more than two hundred years old, it dates from the renaissance of Rosicrucianism and Masonry in the eighteenth century.
We have said that as the color of blood is associated with the Grail, the red cross also occurs repeatedly throughout Christian history. When the Garden Tomb was unearthed, two Byzantine crosses were found inscribed in red on the east wall. These have faded away on exposure to light and air, but copies of them were made and are reproduced in the various brochures dealing with this discovery.
— Corinne Heline
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